The Two Sisters- (NC) 1915 Brown A
[From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, 1952. This is one of the better US collections and has five music examples plus additional texts. A traditional melody from an unknown version with similar text is supplied below by Brown editors of Vol. 4.
R. Matteson 2014]
OLDER BALLADS MOSTLY BRITISH: 4. The Two Sisters (Child 10)
4. The Two Sisters (Child 10)
For the range of this story in other lands and tongues, see Child's headnote; for its occurrence in Great Britain and America since Child's time, consult BSM 16-17 and add to the list there given Vermont (NGMS 3-4), Tennessee (BTFLS viii 71), North Carolina (FSRA 13), Florida (SFLQ viii 138-9), Arkansas (OFS I 50-2, 53-5, 59-60, 63), Missouri (OFS I 52-3, 55-8, 60-2), Ohio (BSO 17-8), Indiana (BSI 42-50), and Michigan (BSSM 32-4). Mr. Paul G. Brewster, who has made an intensive study (as yet unpublished) of this ballad, believes that, as ballad, it is definitely Scandinavian in origin, starting in Norway some time before the seventeenth century and spreading to Sweden, Denmark, the Faeroes (and thence to Iceland), Scodand, England, and America; and that the corresponding folk tale tradition is Slavic, probably Polish. The "singing bones" — the revelation of the crime by a fiddle made from the dead girl's body — have almost entirely vanished from American texts, but a trace of them is preserved in our version C. All but one of the versions in our collection belong to the common American tradition, marked by the "bow down" refrain.
A. 'The Two Sisters.' Secured by Professor E. L. Starr of Salem College from an unnamed informant and sent to Dr. Brown in 1915. The intercalated refrain runs without change through all the stanzas. "Knight" is marked as a variant reading for "Squire" in stanza 2.
1 There was a man lived in the west
Bow down, bow down
There was a man lived in the west
Bow once to me
There was a man lived in the west,
He had two daughters of the best.
I will be true, true to my love.
And my love will be true to me.
2 A Squire[1] he courted the eldest one,
But he loved the youngest one.
3 He gave the youngest a gay gold ring
And to the eldest gave not a thing.
4 He gave the youngest a satin cap;
The eldest she got mad at that.
5 One day as they walked by the river side
They sat at the bank and they cried and they cried.
6 The eldest she pushed the youngest in;
The youngest said it was a sin.
7 She swam till she came to the miller's pond.
And there she swam all around and around.
8 'O miller, miller, save my life,
And I will be your loving wife.'
9 The miller threw in his hook and line
And pulled her out by the hair so fine.
10 The hook and the line were laid on the shelf —
If you want any more, why, sing it yourself.
1. also has "knight"
Volume 4:
A. 'The Two Sisters.' There is no recording of this version, but the Collection contains two manuscript copies, in different hands but otherwise identical, of the words and tune. It is included here, though it is probably not of North Carolina provenience.
For melodic relationship cf. *FSF 243-4, No. 147A. The melodic intervals of the first three measures of our version are the same. Scale: Heptachordal, plagal. Tonal Center: f. Structure: aa1a1b (4,4,4,4).